Her Socialist Smile

Her Socialist Smile (2020, 93 min)

Directed by John Gianvito

An experimental documentary essay on the political imagination of iconic humanitarian, author, and advocate for the blind Helen Keller. World famous by the age of 8 for having learned how to read and communicate through the finger alphabet, Helen Keller (1880-1968) remained for the course of her 87 years the most revered blind-deaf woman on the planet. Largely omitted or minimized within the voluminous literature her life generated however was the fact that Keller had become, by time she reached her thirties, a committed believer in the principles of Socialism. The product of years of research, Her Socialist Smile resurrects the radical Keller, serving as a rousing reminder that Keller’s undaunted activism for labor rights, pacifism, and women’s suffrage was philosophically inseparable from her battles for the rights of the disabled.

The film will be screened with subtitles for the d/Deaf and hard of hearing and with Audio Description. The live introduction to the screening will be captioned.

John Gianvito (b. 1956)

John GIANVITO (b. 1956) is a filmmaker and curator living in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also a Professor in the Department of Visual & Media Arts at Emerson College in Boston. His films include The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (2001) and Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007). In 2001 he received the French honorary title of Knight in the Order of Art and Letters.

Carolyn Forché

Narrator Carolyn FORCHÉ is an acclaimed American poet, editor, translator, professor, and human rights advocate. Her books include Gathering the Tribes (1976), The Country Between Us (1981), The Angel of History (1984), and Blue Hour (2003). In 1998 in Stockholm, she was given the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation for Peace and Culture Award, in recognition of her work on behalf of human rights and the preservation of memory and culture.

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